Editor’s note: A reader who identified himself as a sociopath recently posted this comment on the Lovefraud Blog, and sent it to me in an email. I am posting this piece because it provides a good description of how sociopaths view themselves, and explains why they are quite comfortable taking advantage of the rest of us. Be sure to read the question I asked him, and his response, at the end.
We are uniquely gifted
“Sociopath” is a misleading word: it implies a disorder, something wrong and unnatural with the person, and this couldn’t be further from the truth. We, the people you refer to as sociopaths, have nothing wrong with us. We are instead, the uniquely gifted. Our gifts have been mischaracterized and maligned and it’s time someone set the record straight.
What the experts call superficial charm, I call having a natural ability to win friends and influence people. What experts call manipulative and conning, I call an affinity for persuasion based upon an innate ability to pinpoint others personality strengths and weaknesses. What the experts decry as a lack of compassion, I call pragmatism and clarity. What experts call a “problem with authority”, I call embracing personal power and celebrating the independent spirit. What experts call “delusions of grandeur”, I call self confidence and optimism. What experts call “shallow emotional affect,” I call freedom from the tyranny of irrational emotions. And finally, while the experts say that guiltlessness is a disorder (because it is the lack of guilt that separates the sociopath, psychopath and Machiavellian from the general population), I say it is the enhanced ability to do the things that build civilizations and keep societies going, the very things that the guilt afflicted shy away from. It is no coincidence that our lack of guilt so often comes with abnormally high intelligence and charisma.
We are born to lead and many of our traits support this conclusion. We are born knowing this and the rest of you know it when you see us. It is these very traits that make us necessary for the survival and success of the human species, especially since the dawn of civilization. It’s why you elect us, follow us, and often give your very lives by our command. Though we are found disproportionally in prisons we are found with even greater frequency in your governments, your corporations, your military. Who else but someone devoid of conscience could order thousands of soldiers to die, regardless of how noble the cause? Who can fire hundreds of workers to save a company from bankruptcy and then sleep peacefully that night? Who can so elegantly tell the lies that must be told, to protect the very people to whom the lies are told? It takes one of us to make those calls, the calls that the rest of humanity cannot make.
And yet a distressing number of us become the very thing you fear us all to be; criminals and abusers. This creates a cycle of ignorance, as all the “sociopaths” identified by the news are killers or wife-beaters, and so we identify this collection of gifts as evil, as pathological, and thus those of us in our proper roles feel the need to disguise ourselves for fear of being labeled evil. A similar cycle of ignorance has kept homosexuals oppressed for decades; homosexuality has been associated with child molesters and perverts, drug use and disease, and it was called “evil” for this.
We are not evil; you simply do not recognize the “good” ones as the same phenomena. Google “sociopath” and all you find are ways to recover from contact with a sociopath, information advising you to run from relationships with sociopaths, and misinformation that will claim that “sociopaths cannot feel love” or that we “cannot think of others as human beings” or that we are “parasitic”.
It is very distressing to discover, for a child who has always known that he was different, that he is a monster… that he is doomed to live a loveless life and become a criminal, that he will never be able to hold a job or raise a family. Indeed, one must wonder how often do one of us accepts the mischaracterization of our abilities and instincts as things to be repressed and rejected due to ignorance? How often do the young among our frequently demonized minority discover what he is, buys into the paranoid misinformation and simply does what he is expected to do, withholding from society the very qualities it needs and secretly wants to maintain itself and imprisoning himself in a state of confusion and needless pain as a result?
What is the so called sociopath? A sociopath is one of your potential leaders, labeled by the fearful and unreasoning masses as something sick and evil. “Sociopath” is a negative label which only serves to further alienate people who simply need to be allowed to embrace their gifts. Getting rid of this misleading term should be the first step towards fully understanding who we are and the role we play in this world. We are not the embodiment of a pathology. On the contrary; we are instead the uniquely gifted.
Editor’s note: I sent the author this question: “How do you justify lying and deception?” His reply:
Justify? Did you forget the “no guilt, no remorse” part already? We have no need to justify the lying, as we don’t see anything inherently wrong with it. Deception is merely a means to an end. Nor is it necessarily malevolent. We simply act in our own self-interest. We know what we want and the easiest way to get it. It’s a gift.
Ox Drover
😀 Thanks STJ, actually Frankie Lane was one of my favorite singers when I was a kid, and Rawhide was one of my favorite TV shows. Clint eastwood was a hunk and I liked Wagon Train Too
Ah the memories….Eastwood is 82 now I think or something along that line…looks like he’s had plenty of plastic surgery…but I don’t have it because I don’t want the dimple in my chin to have formerly been my navel! LOL
I saw Ann Margaret the other day on a TV show. She was playing a former TV star, and she still “looked the same” the big hair and so on, but you could tell she had had so much plastic surgery that she didn’t really look REAL any more, she looked like a plastic Ann Margaret doll that had gotten too close to the heater and sort of melted. Know what I mean? It was GASTLY (how ever you spell that!) anyway, I decided I like my wrinkles, and at least they are real and authentic…and I’m not a person over 60 trying to look 16 any more. These people with their bad and continual plastic surgery begin to look like the portrait of Dorian Gray.
sharing the journey
I agree. What they do to make themselves beautiful actually has the opposite effect and makes them ugly.
I love interesting faces with lines. I always imagine what caused each line in that face.
I too will grow old in this day and age DISgracfully–without cosmetic surgery. I love a lived in face. LOL
Glad you liked the song–just saw you in my mind.
STJ
xxx
skylar
STJ,
that’s a cute song!
Though I’ve never said, “you can’t handle me.”
I AM known to say, “The truth? You can’t HANDLE the truth!”
😆
sharing the journey
That’s what makes them unable to handle you.
It’s this verse that reminds me of you.
It’s a simple fact
That you can’t seem to handle me
No matter how you act with them
You can’t handle me
It’s just a simple fact
That you can’t seem to handle me
No matter how you act with them
You can’t handle me
You gotta make me feel you got my back
But you’re a selfish
Narcissistic psycho-freaking
Boot-licking Nazi creep and
You can’t handle me
STJ
xx
darwinsmom
As I posted in the thread where the self-proclaimed spath posted the above dribble… it are self-serving arguments.
Three errors are made
a) all the ills the self-proclaimed spath argues we need spaths for in leadership positions which are caused by spaths (wars, crime, global economy meltdowns). So, the truth is that if there weren’t spaths, we’d have less evil in the world to remedy, fight, etc…
b) the premisse that only spaths can deal correctly with the issues… Bernie Maddoff proves him wrong.
c) the “gifts” he defines as basically perfect for leadership… actually those have little or nothing to do with leadership at all. Leaders show initiative together with the goal to serve community/group and derives most of its pleasure from the combination of those (ABOVE-WE) quarter. Spaths take initiative and have ABOVE beahviour, but never WE beheaviour. Good leaders are able to inspire people into taking initiative as well. Spaths wish to keep power for themselves and keep others from taking initiative. They show behaviour of the self-serving “rival”, not the “leader”. Why? They lack feelings of responsibility, accountability and empathy.
skylar
Ahhh, I see. STJ,
from the urban dictionary:
I love some of the words that the younger generation is using to understand reality. They really do “get it”. Only to them, it isn’t as frightening because they always “got it”. They grew up with narcissism in their faces and they see it, they even name it.
You can’t handle me means you can’t manipulate me.
Frenemy is a backstabber.
The younger generation only has to make that last little connection between their words and the dangerous reality.
Ox Drover
Darwin’s mom,
You are right, if there were no sociopaths there would be
NO WARS
FEW if any bad divorces and essentially, (few if any)
rapes
murders
robberies
gangs
child abuse
financial crimes
Probably there would be little if any hunger in the world or extreme poverty…Yep without sociopaths the world would be DIFFERENT THAT’S FOR SURE.
sharing the journey
This reminds me of you Darwin’smom.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYiwxM_RVEI
STJ
xxx
sharing the journey
Skylar
‘You can’t handle me or it’ is a common phrase where I come from. I just assumed everyone knew what it meant.
It’s just so you.
STJ
xxx
darwinsmom
LOL, STJ
Darwin is purring loudly along wth the video you posted. He’s super pleased I’m home again. Woke up Wednesday morning 5 am to the bus tragedy news, to pack my bag and leave with a bus full of teens to Germany on a 3 day excursion trip. Returned home, this evening, all of us, without any incident. But when a parent had heard on the news of some bus accident near the city where we had been stationed for 2 nights until this morning we received a panicky call from colleagues and the principal to confirm that we were all right. I had the principal on my cell phone, and told her we were all ok, we knew of no accident near Triers today, nor were we involved in one. I told her we were just wrapping up a visit to Luxemburg City on our way back home and had joined in into the national 1 min silence for today at 11am, though we were abroad.
This was one of the tragic random evils unrelated to spaths, exept for two newspapers that printed portrait pictures of all the victims, claiming it’s in hommage to the victims after protest about it… of course the arguments they use to defend their choice are as full of holes as the swish hole cheese arguments of the above self-proclaimed spath’s arguments of spaths being the ultimate gifted leaders. VOMIT!